“I don’t think there is any political appetite for people outside this building for salary increases,” said state Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango. “I just don’t think with this economy, with people flat unemployed, it’s an issue I could support.”

Seth Masket, a political science assistant professor at the University of Denver, said he understands that sentiment.

“But when elected officials are pressured to find outside jobs — jobs that might be a conflict — then it’s probably time for a change,” he said.

Work on the side

Gessler, a Republican who took office earlier this month, said last week he is going to be moonlighting as a lawyer for his old law firm — a firm known for representing clients on elections and campaign law issues, the very areas Gessler is now charged with policing as secretary of state.

Earlier this week, he told lawmakers they should revisit the idea of a citizens commission that can suggest pay increases.

Attorney General John Suthers and Treasurer Walker Stapleton, both Republicans, also have outside employment gigs. And Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper wants Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia to head the Colorado Department of Higher Education, which would raise his salary to $146,040.

Democrats have criticized Gessler, saying his plans, at a minimum, create the appearance of a conflict of interest and that he knew the salary was $68,500 when he ran for office. Some Republicans at the Capitol have privately expressed dismay at his decision.

But the brouhaha has renewed the debate about Colorado’s pay scale and what can be done about it considering the state’s $1.1 billion shortfall next budget year.

It was a different story back in 1997, when Colorado’s economy boomed.

Former Sen. Dick Mutzebaugh, a Highlands Ranch Republican, sponsored a bill to boost the salaries for statewide constitutional officers by $20,000, while legislative salaries increased from $17,500 to $30,000 a year. The bill passed.

“Some lawmakers voted ‘no,’ but I didn’t get a single call from the public,” Mutzebaugh said.

The raises went into effect two years later, in 1999, with Republican Bill Owens becoming the first governor to collect the $90,000-a-year salary, which he supplemented with fees from speaking engagements.

In his first year in office Owens collected $18,000 in speaker’s fees, all outside the state. In his last, he received $24,000 for one event, speeches to the United Jewish Community of Ukraine.

Near the end of his second term, Owens quietly revisited the salary issue, hoping to boost the pay for the new crop of statewide officials who would take office in 2007.

By then, Democrats had won control of the legislature.

“I spoke to the governor himself,” said former Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald , a Jefferson County Democrat. “One of the things he pointed out was that Bill Ritter was likely to become governor and Ritter had four children. But we were cutting budgets, and it didn’t seem like the right time to do it.”

Owens did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment.

Timing an issue in raises

Ritter took office in 2007 with the same $90,000 salary but a new twist: Voters in 2006 also passed an ethics measure that prohibited elected officials from taking gifts in most circumstances. Ritter didn’t accept money for speaking engagements.

“If you’re going to keep the pay at $90,000 you better make sure a governor can go out and earn money with some speaking fees,” Anderson, the former senator, said.

She once approached Ritter about increasing the salaries, but heard back there was no appetite for doing so.

“We were furloughing employees, reducing the number of state employees, and even though the salary is dramatically low for the CEO of a $19 billion corporation, it seemed the wrong message to send,” Ritter said.

Ritter, a Democrat, chose not to seek re-election and, like his predecessors, he parlayed his experience as governor into a higher-paying job.

He begins work Monday in his new job as director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University. The position pays $300,000, making him one of the top-paid staffers at CSU.

Within five months of leaving office in January 2007, Owens publicly announced three jobs: He formed a commercial real estate investment with two partners, became a senior fellow at the University of Denver, and was named vice chairman of an international business working on public-private- sector partnerships for public projects.

Democrat Roy Romer accepted a $188,000-a-year job as superintendent of the Los Angeles School District after leaving Colorado’s gubernatorial office in January 1999. Romer didn’t collect for speaking fees while he was governor.

Democrat Dick Lamm in 1987 returned to the University of Denver, declining what he called a “very lucrative job” at a law firm.

For the next year 20 years, he collected as much in outside speaking fees every year as he did as a professor. “I put my kids through college through the speaking circuit,” Lamm said.

It was a skill he honed as governor. In 1986, in Lamm’s last year in office, he took in $133,728 for speeches and articles. His previous high for honoraria had been $46,000 in 1985, according to published reports.

Mutzebaugh, who served 16 years in the General Assembly before leaving in 1998 when the first wave of term limits hit, said the salaries need to be raised again.

“Not this year, the economy’s too bad. But maybe next year, with the raises becoming effective after the governor’s race in 2014,” he said. “The salaries right now are just crazy, they’re so low.”

So far, Hickenlooper — who made millions in the restaurant industry before becoming Denver mayor — hasn’t complained.

“You do this job not because of a level of compensation,” he said, “but out of love.”

A customer dining at Washington’s Oceanaire restaurant noticed an unusual line at the bottom of his receipt: “Due to the rising costs of doing business in this location, including costs associated with higher minimum wage rates, a 3% surcharge has been added to your total bill.”

Three fundraising giants decided to pull events from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday, signaling a direct blowback to his business empire from his comments on Charlottesville’s racial unrest.